DRM like this, that fucks paying customers over and leaves them feeling cheated and angry, turns an honest man into a pirate. Because that's what he'll do next time around, when he sees that his neighbour's downloaded copy from mininova runs every time without any hassle.
It's, what, an hour and a quarter to go? Don't download the bloody thing yet! Wait until it counts! If you haven't already got the beta you can wait another seventy-five minutes, right?
It doesn't say love thy neighbour to me, it's says I'm better than you, you stinking infidel.
It says to me, 'I believe that an omnipotent being is a personal friend of mine and will permit me to survive death'.
As a result I drive really fucking carefully around those lunatics. Maybe they're going straight to heaven, but I don't want them to take me with them when they go...
It's just 'eyetoy', which has been out on the Playstation for ages! It won't work in real people's houses, because people will walk past and curtains will flutter in the wind!
Actually, think it through:
Replace the sensor bar with a camera array. Put the infrared LEDs on the controller, and use a filter to cut out visible light, to avoid picking up irrelevant background events. Provide the console with the necessary computational resources to work out the complete 3D motion of the controller from this. It would give you much more detailed motion sensing.
Problems: calibration will be a nightmare. And just as with the Wii at present, once the camera loses sight of the infrared source, you're reduced to dead reckoning with the accelerometers.
It's not like they sent you to Australia and you arrived the next day by jet. It was a very long, dangerous, and generally crowded voyage that took weeks.
So much worse than the coffin ships that hundreds of thousands were voluntarily boarding? If your choice is (a) to get aboard a hellish ship and leave Ireland forever, or (b) to steal food and if caught and convicted then to get aboard a hellish ship and leave Ireland forever, or (c) to starve - well, that's got to reduce the effectiveness of the deterrent.
(I don't actually know anything of the relative mortality rate of Famine-era emigrants to America, as compared to transportees to Australia of the same period, so if you could point me at any studies that have been done I'd be glad to read them.)
A polite letter to your MP, believe it or not, does have an effect on them - especially Labour MPs who voted for the bill with majorities of 15% or less.
A little research on this matter reveals that my local MP (Lynne Jones, Labour, Birmingham Selly Oak) voted against the government. I do think a letter of congratulations is in order here.
"have an unelected monarch who is a militaristic nutter pissing around in America largely out of spite and who then descends into mental illness but you can't get rid of him because he claims to be appointed by a god"
We did get rid of him. Shut him quietly away and his son took over. Said son did bugger all because he was a lazy fat drunken gluttonous lecherous oxygen thief, so Parliament ran the country. During this period our Empire in Canada was attacked by the United States; in response we invaded and burned Washington to the ground. We were also at war with Napoleon Bonaparte, whose total defeat ushered in a century of British global hegemony. Not bad going, for a country being run while the king's in the loony bin and the regent's in bed with a hangover.
So essentially you're saying it is like Microsoft Windows. That should go down well here.
Well, let's rewrite the analogy in more/. terms. The Americans - and many other countries - have monolithic constitutions. Ours is modular - a mass of different reform acts and statutes and precedents, on top of the Monarch E2 microconstitution. Britain's running on Hurd, thank you very much.
Correct, but, well, some of those convictions were for trivial offences like fruit stealing.
In particular, many people were transported for stealing food during the Irish famine, when it was literally that or starve to death with your family. As it turned out this wasn't much of a deterrent; in Australia you'd at least be fed.
Scouting is open to all young people aged 6 to 25 of every faith and background.
I seem to recall having to promise to do my duty to God and to the Queen. Back then I didn't have a problem with that; nowadays I'm an atheist and a republican:-)
Looking around the UK Scouts website, they don't seem to insist on the kids being straight or theistic (although they do encourage religious participation, and although they vary the wording of the promise for many faiths there's no atheists' formulation). However, I am disturbed by the implications of this document, listing their 'Key Policies'.
It seems there are exactly two kinds of people they refuse to accept as troop leaders.
Atheists, and paedophiles.
Am I the only one who finds that incredibly insulting?
Being homosexual has a large bearing on the ability of the Boy Scouts of America to guide you in the process of growing up to be a homosexual man.
Well, yes. It makes it possible, for a start. But if you happen to be heterosexual, why would you WANT the Boy Scouts of America to guide you in the process of growing up to be a homosexual man?
Jewish Blood Libel. Not sure what you mean by this.
I've heard it used to mean two things:
First, the mediaeval legend that Jews used the blood of Christian babies in their blasphemous religious practices. Very few people believe this today, though I gather it's still circulated along with copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion by purveyors of militant Islamic bullshit.
Second, the line 'May his blood be upon us, and on our children' at the Crucifixion, used to condemn the entire Jewish people for the death of Jesus. The Jew as Christ-killer is a recurring motif in hate literature throughout the centuries, and still inspires the faithful to the traditional bigotry to this day.
Most of its inhabitants would agree with that statement. The Scots and Welsh, and the more pedantic among the English, would insist loudly that Great Britain is three countries.
I might add that it is a fundamental error in logic to attempt to define the boundaries of, or apply measurements to the scope of our little bubble without presupposing a greater realm beyond.
It's possible for the Universe to be finite but unbounded. That's the closed Universe model. Out of favour post-WMAP - we now think the Universe is flat - but mathematically consistent.
And it's not an error in logic at all. It's an error in Euclidean geometry. The error in logic is in assuming that the geometry of the cosmos has to be Euclidean.
Outside of playful uses (such as "off in one's own universe" or a TV serial's universe) the word "universe" should be synonymous with "absolutely everything ever," and we ought to come up with some intermediary term (like "brane" if you feel like you require more than ten dimensions in order to explain quantum phenomena) to refer to this nice big bubble of matter-energy we've found ourselves encapsulated in.
We'll get onto that later. Right now we've got to deal with the problem that 'atom' means 'indivisible'. People have been using the wrong word ever since Rutherford! What we call quarks should be called atoms, and we need some intermediary term to refer to these nice little bubbles of nucleons and electron clouds we find ourselves to be made of.
Slashdot Mirror
Jools, Jops and Stoo, for a start. War has never been so much fun!
Opera was first, but back then Opera was adware, unless you paid. That put a lot of people off. Phoenix was free in every sense.
By the time Opera did away with the ad window and went free-as-in-beer, Firefox was already way ahead.
DRM like this, that fucks paying customers over and leaves them feeling cheated and angry, turns an honest man into a pirate. Because that's what he'll do next time around, when he sees that his neighbour's downloaded copy from mininova runs every time without any hassle.
It's, what, an hour and a quarter to go? Don't download the bloody thing yet! Wait until it counts! If you haven't already got the beta you can wait another seventy-five minutes, right?
It says to me, 'I believe that an omnipotent being is a personal friend of mine and will permit me to survive death'.
As a result I drive really fucking carefully around those lunatics. Maybe they're going straight to heaven, but I don't want them to take me with them when they go...
'I bought a 'Baby on Board' sticker. Now people will stop deliberately running into the back of us!'
-- Marge Simpson, Homer's Barbershop Quartet
Actually, think it through:
Replace the sensor bar with a camera array. Put the infrared LEDs on the controller, and use a filter to cut out visible light, to avoid picking up irrelevant background events. Provide the console with the necessary computational resources to work out the complete 3D motion of the controller from this. It would give you much more detailed motion sensing.
Problems: calibration will be a nightmare. And just as with the Wii at present, once the camera loses sight of the infrared source, you're reduced to dead reckoning with the accelerometers.
Er... Do you often boil people down?
So much worse than the coffin ships that hundreds of thousands were voluntarily boarding? If your choice is (a) to get aboard a hellish ship and leave Ireland forever, or (b) to steal food and if caught and convicted then to get aboard a hellish ship and leave Ireland forever, or (c) to starve - well, that's got to reduce the effectiveness of the deterrent.
(I don't actually know anything of the relative mortality rate of Famine-era emigrants to America, as compared to transportees to Australia of the same period, so if you could point me at any studies that have been done I'd be glad to read them.)
Yes, the ignorance we see daily is terrible. Why, some people can't even spell the man's name!
A little research on this matter reveals that my local MP (Lynne Jones, Labour, Birmingham Selly Oak) voted against the government. I do think a letter of congratulations is in order here.
No, but an English parliament has, on and off. Simon de Montfort, 1265.
We did get rid of him. Shut him quietly away and his son took over. Said son did bugger all because he was a lazy fat drunken gluttonous lecherous oxygen thief, so Parliament ran the country. During this period our Empire in Canada was attacked by the United States; in response we invaded and burned Washington to the ground. We were also at war with Napoleon Bonaparte, whose total defeat ushered in a century of British global hegemony. Not bad going, for a country being run while the king's in the loony bin and the regent's in bed with a hangover.
Well, let's rewrite the analogy in more /. terms. The Americans - and many other countries - have monolithic constitutions. Ours is modular - a mass of different reform acts and statutes and precedents, on top of the Monarch E2 microconstitution. Britain's running on Hurd, thank you very much.
Really?
In particular, many people were transported for stealing food during the Irish famine, when it was literally that or starve to death with your family. As it turned out this wasn't much of a deterrent; in Australia you'd at least be fed.
Did a helluva job there, din't he?
Take a look at the North of Ireland, will you?
I seem to recall having to promise to do my duty to God and to the Queen. Back then I didn't have a problem with that; nowadays I'm an atheist and a republican :-)
Looking around the UK Scouts website, they don't seem to insist on the kids being straight or theistic (although they do encourage religious participation, and although they vary the wording of the promise for many faiths there's no atheists' formulation). However, I am disturbed by the implications of this document, listing their 'Key Policies'.
It seems there are exactly two kinds of people they refuse to accept as troop leaders.
Atheists, and paedophiles.
Am I the only one who finds that incredibly insulting?
Well, yes. It makes it possible, for a start. But if you happen to be heterosexual, why would you WANT the Boy Scouts of America to guide you in the process of growing up to be a homosexual man?
Yet you're afraid to let them near your children, and afraid that they might make your children turn out just like them...
I've heard it used to mean two things:
First, the mediaeval legend that Jews used the blood of Christian babies in their blasphemous religious practices. Very few people believe this today, though I gather it's still circulated along with copies of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion by purveyors of militant Islamic bullshit.
Second, the line 'May his blood be upon us, and on our children' at the Crucifixion, used to condemn the entire Jewish people for the death of Jesus. The Jew as Christ-killer is a recurring motif in hate literature throughout the centuries, and still inspires the faithful to the traditional bigotry to this day.
Most of its inhabitants would agree with that statement. The Scots and Welsh, and the more pedantic among the English, would insist loudly that Great Britain is three countries.
It's possible for the Universe to be finite but unbounded. That's the closed Universe model. Out of favour post-WMAP - we now think the Universe is flat - but mathematically consistent.
And it's not an error in logic at all. It's an error in Euclidean geometry. The error in logic is in assuming that the geometry of the cosmos has to be Euclidean.
We'll get onto that later. Right now we've got to deal with the problem that 'atom' means 'indivisible'. People have been using the wrong word ever since Rutherford! What we call quarks should be called atoms, and we need some intermediary term to refer to these nice little bubbles of nucleons and electron clouds we find ourselves to be made of.
Ask Steve Jackson. The government got a bit... confused... about GURPS Cyberpunk.